


Butter, Sage, Apples (A Recipe for Pork Chops)

by livenudebigfoot



Category: Ravenous (1999)
Genre: Abuse, Abuser POV, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Disputes, Evil Wins, Food Porn, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Post-Canon, Starvation, Which is a lot of violence for the record
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 18:17:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21342604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livenudebigfoot/pseuds/livenudebigfoot
Summary: Ives gets everything he ever wanted.
Relationships: John Boyd/Ives
Comments: 9
Kudos: 61
Collections: Shipoween 2019 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	Butter, Sage, Apples (A Recipe for Pork Chops)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [draculard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/gifts).

He wakes to pale light, the earliest touches of dawn. It plays across the bearskin that drapes heavy across their legs, colors dancing in the prisms of the individual hairs. It casts an icy glow on the peak of Boyd’s bare shoulder. 

Ives throws an arm across his body, feels Boyd jolt against him in horror. He’s been awake for hours, no doubt, fumbling for the courage to slip away, knowing for certain that this is impossible. The topography of their straw mattress, the shape and weight of their forms upon it, are quantities well known and measured to Ives. If Boyd even thinks of moving, Ives knows it.

Ah. Domesticity.

“Well, Captain Boyd,” Ives asks, nuzzling the back of Boyd’s neck, “what will you trouble yourself with today?”

He hears the click of Boyd’s dry throat as he swallows. His voice is heavy with sleep, but very careful. “See to the horses. Collect the eggs. Kill a chicken for stew. Repairs are needed…” he shifts, twitches as Ives scrapes his teeth on his throat, “...to the roof of the barracks. And the O’Neill’s wagon, the one that broke an axle, is still sitting about a mile south of here. I think I could repair it; get them back on the road before winter.”

“Very kind,” Ives murmurs against his skin.

Ives cradles the stiff, fearful shape of him beneath the quilt before Boyd says at last, “And what will you do?”

Ives sighs deeply, thoughtfully. “I’m feeling peckish.” 

He pauses, listens delightedly for the horrified catch in Boyd’s breath. It’s softer than it’s ever been before. He’s getting better at hiding it.

Ives finishes, “Not to disdain your chickens, but I think it’s time we sought out heartier fare.”

“There are children here.” Boyd can’t quite hide the quaver in his voice.

He chuckles. “What must you think of me, John?”

* * *

There are a great many people at Fort Spencer. The last great rush of humanity before the close of winter: some jolly, some ragged, some fearful, all eyeing the changing leaves with trepidation. Always, there’s a question of risk and reward - will they press on and risk starvation in the mountains, or will they hole up safe and sound at Fort Spencer and come late to the gold in California? - and the population shifts from day to day as new travelers arrive and old travelers depart, as wagon trains break apart and reform. In such a shuffle, it is not so peculiar that some should be lost.

Just as Ives foresaw. 

He strides into the yard amongst the travelers, finds himself a comfortable spot upon a bench he built for just this purpose last winter. He lights a cigar, stretches like a cat in the sun, and he watches. 

It’s a funny thing, to see the yard so full of life. Remembering the Fort as it was when he first arrived, ramshackle and neglected and practically abandoned, its new incarnation feels like the realization of a dream. The buildings are all either repaired or entirely new, built by himself and Boyd in the spring and summer of last year. The yard is bustling; the air is filled with the smell of cooking and the sound of work. When men pass by, they nod their heads and tip their hats to him, and they call him Colonel Ives, and he feels rather like the mayor of something. The children - the ones Boyd fears for so - scamper underfoot, chasing each other in the mud.

They’re in no particular danger, of course. Not from Ives. A missing child will always be sought for, after all, and there’s little meat or vitality to be had from them. The parents of these children are likewise distasteful to Ives, as a wife is not likely to move on without her husband, and a husband unlikely (but not  _ so  _ unlikely) to depart without first having found his wife. Families are loud, and people take notice of them. Ives prefers to escape that notice.

His interest lies more in the men that travel alone, the men who carry their possessions on their backs, the men who sit apart, the men who travel for their own secret reasons and are unburdened with companions. Few take notice of such men. Fewer still will seek them out if they go missing.

Ives can spot them so easily, now.

The likely lad cannot be more than 21 years of age. Tall, strong, but gawky. Left to his own devices, he might have filled out nicely, but he has the look of a plant grown in darkness. Dark hair, dark eyes, hawklike nose, somber face. A quiet, scholarly demeanor. Given to drink, Ives suspects, but not given to companionship in such a way that others would share their drink with him. From time to time, he clutches a rosary in a way that makes Ives nostalgic.

“McCulloch, is it not?” Ives begins, startling the boy out of a daydream.

The boy scrambles to his feet. He evades Ives’ gaze by staring at the toes of his boots in the mud. “It is, sir.”

“Traveling alone?”

He shakes his head. “I’ve been linked up with the Reeds’ wagon train since Ohio, sir.”

“But you’re not a Reed.” Ives leans in. “And by the look of their daughters, you’re not looking to become one.”

The tips of his ears color. “No, sir.”

Ives leans against the wall beside him. “What awaits you in San Francisco, young Mr. McCulloch?”

“My uncle, sir,” the boy says. “He’s a woodworker and I’m to be apprenticed to him.”

“Are you any good?”

The boy looks up at him for the first time. He has a shy sort of pride in his eyes. He opens the bag that he keeps close to his side. “I think so,” he says.

Inside are little wooden trinkets, intricately carved - one a bear, one an ox, one a horse - in little scraps of wood, snatched covetously from the campfire and transformed in the hands of this clever little lad.

Ives exhales a plume of smoke. “I should say so. That’s fine work.”

The boy closes up his bag, shy once more. “Thank you, sir.”

“I wonder if you would be willing to part with one. For a fee, of course. A skilled craftsman must be paid.”

His eyes light up. “Sir, I…I wouldn’t know what to charge…”

“Well, we’ll haggle over a meal. Tonight, if you’re free.”

“I…” he hesitates, politeness or distrust warring with the kind of hunger that builds such a scrawny frame. 

“The Reeds feeding you well, young McCulloch?”

He answers, softly, “I feed myself, sir.”

“And not well, by the look of it. Come on, permit me to fatten you up a little before you go off to San Francisco.”

The boy is still considering when Boyd appears. He touches Ives on the lower back as he approaches: a bold gesture for the middle of the yard, but perhaps he’s looking to ingratiate himself. Still, Ives warms to it. Boyd is fresh and strong from a good night’s sleep, his face flushed from work, his sweater rolled to the elbows. It’s a pleasing sight.

“O’Neill and I are going out,” Boyd says, “to see about getting that wagon repaired.”

“How long will you be gone?” Ives asks. 

“Hard to say. I’ve seen to the chicken. Will you cook it up for the boys?”

“Of course. Captain Boyd, this is…”

The boy interrupts. “Need help with the wagon?” he asks Boyd.

Boyd glances slow and careful from the boy to Ives. “You know what you’re doing?”

The boy nods. “Been fixin’ the Reeds’ since Ohio. It’s no trouble. I could stand to get away from the fort a while.”

Ives frowns, almost imperceptibly. He’s beginning to think he’s mistaken earnest shyness for shiftlessness. He’s made that mistake before.

Boyd smiles, small. “You might regret that, once you’re back on the road again.”

“I’d like to get back on the road again,” says the boy, “so I can regret it.”

Boyd nods. “Alright, come along.”

“Be back before dark,” Ives tells him. “I’ve invited young McCulloch here to supper.”

Boyd’s eyes go hard, flinty with grim knowledge. “Before dark.”

* * *

Ives takes a special pride in his larder. No surprises there.

In the essentials, they are well-fortified. Every month, one of the new boys that Slauson sent them will make the journey into town and return laden with sacks of cornmeal and flour and beans and salt, enough to ensure that their weary travelers will not go hungry. There are onions, too, and potatoes and carrots. Garlands of garlic, of dried chiles, of bundled spices wreath the rafters. 

Most precious to Ives are the rarities. Coin is never taken from travelers in exchange for a few nights weathering at Fort Spencer. Such shelter is assured to them by the government of the United States. But on occasion, if Boyd should repair a wagon wheel or if Ives should offer guidance on their route through the Rockies, a traveler will offer. And Boyd or Ives will gracefully turn down that offer, every time. And then they will ask, in a deferential sort of way, if some small ingredient might be spared. 

That is how the tiny vial of saffron was acquired, the foraged mushrooms, the sack of walnuts, the wheel of hard cheese, the bag of sourdough starter that Boyd diligently feeds. The bottle of Scotch, although that was not given, as such. Merely a lucky find in the pack of a westbound drifter who had the misfortune of becoming lunch. Still, Ives was never one to turn it down. 

The smell of the room intoxicating, spiced and rich with possibilities. Ives plucks a bulb of garlic from one garland, a bundle of sage leaves from another. From a place of honor on a shelf, he takes a small, wax-capped bottle of balsamic vinegar, given in kindness by an Italian traveler and never yet opened. Lastly, he selects his latest prize: a basket of apples, picked along the trail and burstingly ripe. Something must be done with them, and soon.

Ives gathers up his duller ingredients - his salt, his pepper, his butter - and bundles it all up under one arm. As he leaves for the kitchen, he takes a curl of candied orange peel from a jar and chews it, thoughtfully.

His imagination is already afire.

* * *

Surrounded by the furls of apple peels, Ives meditates on comfort and on settling down. 

He feared this, once. When first he traveled west, with only a long convalescence and a slow death waiting to greet him at his destination, Ives greatly feared rest and quiet. He drank as often as his troubled constitution would allow and kept company with those whose bodies could do what his could not as though this fleeting contact could save him.

And in a sense, it did.

But now...well, he feels differently. He has Boyd now, for company. He has authority: the public authority bestowed by his rank, the private authority he has clawed from General Slauson. For the first time in his life, he has his health. He has abundance. Perhaps he will not always wish to remain at Fort Spencer. Perhaps one day, winter in the mountains will seem dreary instead of cozy. Perhaps his power will one day stifle him. Perhaps the chatter of the travelers in the yard will one day disgust him and make him want to run amok, devouring indiscriminately. Perhaps one day, he may even tire of Boyd. 

But not, Ives reflects, for a great long while. And he has a great long life ahead of him. He can try a great many things, if he wishes. He places his peeled, snowy apples in a pot with water, with sugar, with cinnamon and cloves. He hangs the pot over a roaring fire. 

He leaves it for a time, and instead sees to Boyd’s chicken. He chops it small, cooks it up into a thick stew with mushrooms, carrots, onions, and whatever greens can be found. He seasons it with salt, with bits of the sage and the garlic. 

As the sun sets, Ives serves up this dinner to the men at the long table. Fort Spencer attracts a more palatable class of soldier now: the fresh-faced, the earnest, the hospitable, the dim. They’re more bellhops than battle-hardened warriors. In the event of a particularly harsh winter, any one of them would make a fine meal. Boyd fears for them, even more than he fears for the children.

Ives thinks that soon, he’ll have to take one of them. Not out of necessity; just to remind Boyd that his fears can be realized.

The men ask after Captain Boyd, and Ives tells them the truth. That he’s gone to repair a wagon. That he’ll be back late. That he and the colonel will dine together, once the rest of the men are abed. This draws no questions. The captain and the colonel keep their own, intimate counsel. The men know better than to pry.

Dinner concluded, Ives assigns one young man to the washing up and turns his attention to the pot over the fire, to stirring every so often as the apples fall to mush. The scent fills the air, sweet and homey and tender. 

Once the apple butter is to Ives’ liking - smooth and thick as caramel - he takes a little out among the travelers, offering up sealed jars to the sturdy housewives and spoonfuls to bright-eyed, sticky-fingered children. They say, “Thank you, Colonel Ives.” They say, “Bless you, Colonel Ives.”

He rests on his bench once more, enjoys the rest of his cigar while surveying his domain as the travelers put aside their work and settle in for supper and for sleep.

He feels benevolent.

* * *

It is well after dark when Boyd returns. He lingers at the door for a time, stomps the mud out of his boots. 

“You’re late,” Ives says, lounging deep in an armchair. He is gratified when Boyd jolts.

“Trouble with the wagon.” 

Ives stretches, exhales, rises to his feet. “Oh dear.”

“But the boy turned it around in the end.”

“Talented lad,” Ives says as he crosses the room to divest Boyd of his coat. “Where is he?”

“Gone...to wash his hands.” Boyd swallows hard. “Before supper.”

“And polite, too.” Ives makes a fist tight in his sweater. “How long do we have?”

Boyd’s eyes widen a little. “A few minutes. Not long.”  _ Not long enough _ , he means. “It smells nice in here.”  _ I’m trying to distract you _ , he means.

Without warning, Ives yanks up Boyd’s sweater, begins peeling back layers. “We’d better be quick.”

Boyd makes stiff, fearful protestations until Ives slips a hand down the front of his pants and finds him painfully, guiltily hard. Then he softens. Then his mouth slips open. Then his pulse quickens and he leans into Ives’ touch. Then a trace of sadness flits past his eyes.

Were it not for the conspiratorial little glance he casts over Ives’ shoulder, it would have been business as usual.

Ives turns in time to catch McCulloch’s wrist before the boy can sink a carving knife into his throat. Ives twists with both hands: Boyd drops to the floor with a cry, McCulloch loosens his grip on the knife enough that Ives can snatch it from his grip and unceremoniously jab it up under the boy’s chin.

“Oh,” Ives snarls as McCulloch crashes onto the table, gagging and grappling at his own throat. “Captain Boyd has been  _ loose-lipped _ , I see.”

Boyd is trying to crawl away, but Ives catches him with a strike of his boot. 

“ _ Captain Boyd _ ,” he repeats, kicking him hard in the ribs, “has been faithless.” In the stomach. “And foolish.” In the stomach again. “And  _ sneaky _ .”

Boyd curls up tight on the floor, wheezing for air.

“I suppose you thought you’d made a friend,” Ives sneers. “And I suppose you told him all about our dinner plans. And I suppose you told him to sneak around back and do your dirty work while you kept me distracted. Is that it?” He kicks Boyd square in the face, so blood pours over his mouth and his chin. “Is that it?” Another kick. “You foolish,” another, “cowardly,” another, “little man?”

No more kicks. Boyd’s still now, but for the ragged rise and fall of his chest.

On the table, McCulloch gurgles.

“It’s not your fault, lad,” Ives sighs as he wipes his boot on the floor. “You seem nice enough. But, ah, we all have to eat.”

He grabs tight to the handle of the carving knife and drags sharply downward. After a few short, blood-choked moments, young McCulloch is at peace. Of a kind.

Now there’s the matter of cleaning up.

First, he finds a length of rope and sees to Boyd. He binds Boyd tightly, gags Boyd tighter still, and drags him into the bedroom. He secures Boyd’s feet to one bedpost, his wrists to another, so he can’t inch away. He leaves Boyd there to sleep. 

Now there’s young McCulloch to be seen to. Obviously, there will be no cooking tonight. No butchery either. Boyd’s spoiled everything by returning late. Ives slips outside to grab a canvas tarp from the stable, rolls the body up in it, and hides it away in the larder, back behind the potatoes. He’ll move him to the smokehouse when the time is right.

There’s still the matter of the blood. It’s an old problem. When Boyd is cooperative, one of them will slit dinner’s throat while the other catches the blood in a bowl. Very clean. Very civilized. Tonight, Ives thinks he could scrub the kitchen table to splinters.

Nothing to be had but what’s left of the chicken stew. Ives sits before the roaring fire and eats it congealed and lukewarm. He dips his bread bitterly. Ives has never enjoyed eating the flesh of dumb animals.

In the bedroom late that night, Boyd gazes balefully up at him from the floor, mumbling around the gag. Ives closes the door behind him, bolts it.

“Goes without saying,” Ives says as he aims a kick at Boyd’s stomach, “but you’ve been sent to bed without your supper.”

* * *

Early the following morning, O’Neill is busily loading up his freshly-repaired wagon when he asks, “And where is Captain Boyd?”

“Asleep,” Ives says, as he hoists a bag of grain into the arms of O’Neill’s oldest son. “He’s taken sick.”

O’Neill’s face falls. “Hope it’s not serious.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. Just something he ate.”

“Ah,” O’Neill says, with the air of a man who knows this hardship. “Well, tell him I wish him well and give him my thanks for his help with the wagon. And that McCulloch boy, if you should see him.”

“I’ll do that,” Ives assures him.

* * *

The next day, Mrs. Reed knocks on his door, windswept and worried. “Terribly sorry to disturb you, Colonel Ives,” she pants. “But have you seen young Randall?”

“Hmm?”

“Randall McCulloch. The young man who arrived with our party. Quiet little fellow. Very handy.”

“Oh yes, of course. Young McCulloch. Pleasant young man. I recall he left yesterday morning with the O’Neills.”

Her brow creases. “He did?”

“I’m afraid so, ma’am.”

“That’s not like him,” she says, shaking her head. “That’s not like him at all, to leave without saying goodbye.”

“Perhaps so, but very often young men don’t act like themselves when gold is on the line.”

“Do you suppose?” she says doubtfully.

“I’ve seen it often enough.”

The Reeds never quite believe it. But fearful as they are for the boy, he’s not kin, so in the end they move along without a fight.

* * *

With the Reeds’ party gone, the fort is quiet. There’ll be more parties in the coming month, perhaps even a smattering through the winter. But for now, it’s just him and Boyd and the collection of pleasant, dimwitted privates who make up their men. Ives congratulates them on a fort well-run, and permits them to play cards and break into the booze in the evening, provided they keep to the barracks, as Captain Boyd is still recovering.

It’s then that the real work begins.

Ives butchers McCulloch on the tarp in the larder, carefully collecting the blood and the scraps. The cuts of meat on a man are not so diligently mapped as those on a pig or a cow, but the basic principle remains the same. There’s not a good deal of meat to be had, but it is of good quality. McCulloch was lean, but not tough. Some meat goes to the smoke house, some to the ice house, to be eked out over months. But the chops, Ives takes up to the kitchen.

He heats up the skillet once more, greases it with butter. He takes the chops from McCulloch’s back - bone-in, crusted with salt and pepper - and throws them on the skillet, lets them sizzle. Once cooked, he spreads each chop with a generous layer of apple butter. He adds more butter, adds the garlic and sage, adds quartered apples, drizzles generously with balsamic vinegar and lets it all cook together until the air is fragrant and savory and the apples are well-charred.

Ives fixes a plate.

He sits crosslegged before Boyd’s shuddering, starved form in the bedroom, and he eats with his fingers. He tears. He slurps. He savors. He feels young McCulloch seeping into him, his quiet strength, his hidden energy. Ives picks the chop to the bone. He licks the plate clean.

Then he pulls back Boyd’s gag.

“Go to hell,” he rasps, dry-mouthed.

“May I fix you a plate?” Ives asks.

“Go to h-” he tries to say, but Ives forces his fingers into Boyd’s mouth.

Boyd shudders. And then, tentatively, Boyd sucks at them, desperately, breathing deep, tongue stroking heavily against the pads of Ives’ fingertips.

He withdraws them.

Boyd whispers, mouth flushed, “Please…”

Ives replaces the gag.

He manages to sleep that night, in spite of Boyd’s muffled curses and cries. 

* * *

After yet another day, Ives begins to feel sorry for him. He sets a freshly-prepared plate down beside Boyd’s prone form, peels back his shirt to reveal the dark shadows of his ribs. 

“It’s been about four days since you’ve had water,” Ives says, stroking Boyd’s back. “That’ll kill even you, soon enough.”

Boyd blinks. His eyes are sunken, ringed with dark shadows.

“I’m going to take away the gag soon.” He traces a finger over the ripple of his ribs, the sharp jut of his hip. “But I want you to think very carefully about what you say next. I know you’re a sentimental man. I like that about you, John. But I also know that we’re very alike. You’ll do what needs to be done, to secure your survival. And you need me, John. You need me to do the hard thing for the pair of us to be...to be well. To be strong. To not be alone.” Ives unties the gag. “I won’t force you to eat. But I think you ought to consider your options.”

Boyd stretches his jaw, when the gag slips away. He licks his chapped lips. He whispers, “Water.”

“John…”

“Please,” he whispers, soft-eyed and desperate, “water.”

Ives dribbles water into Boyd’s mouth, wets his lips with it. 

Boyd clears his throat. “I’ll eat,” he says, “but I need help.”

“I’ll untie you,” Ives says, pleasantly.

Ives has to help him anyway. Boyd’s too weak, his limbs too bruised and numb from being bound. It’s better this way, Ives supposes. A reconciliation. And practically speaking, it’s best if Boyd paces himself. Ives feeds him small bites, little morsels.

“You’re a good cook,” Boyd says after a little while, around a mouthful of food.

“That’s rank flattery,” Ives remarks. “But I suppose I’ll take it.”

When Boyd has finished eating, Ives will strip him naked and bathe him, gently, until he glows with health. He will bring him to bed, and remind Boyd of how things are. Many times, if necessary; Ives now possesses the stamina of a young man. They both will, in short order. And Boyd will even come to like it, in his way. He usually does, given even a little bit of persuasion. 

They will pass the night tangled in blankets, and Boyd will be weak with exhaustion or rigid with terror. Either way, Ives will sleep beautifully.

When they awake, they will pass a quiet morning together. Ives will give him another, gentler reminder. They will go about their respective chores. If someone inquires after Boyd’s health, Boyd will smile wanly and say that they are kind to worry, but he is better now. Things will be as they were.

But not for long.

Winter is creeping down from the mountains. Ives feels it more each day. The air will grow colder. The snows will fall heavier and last longer. The roads will become more treacherous. And some party of fools will stagger into Fort Spencer, thinking they’ve found salvation.

It’s foolish, perhaps, to be so excited for something that has happened every winter since he took his position at Fort Spencer and will continue to happen for many years to come. But Ives is a sentimental man, perhaps. And it does feel rather like an anniversary. 

That afternoon, a party of greenhorns fresh out of Indiana wander through the gates of Fort Spencer, foolhardy and raucous and hungry for California gold. Boyd, newly refreshed, meets them at the gates. Their pleasant silence is broken, but Ives can hardly begin to care. The pleasure of having arrived at an understanding is too great. As Boyd helps their new travelers get settled, Ives watches from the comfort of his wooden bench. Idly, he digs at the armrest with a carving knife.

When he looks down, Ives is pleasantly surprised to discover that he has carved a very fine likeness of a bear.

**Author's Note:**

> Meanwhile, Martha's on a beach in Mexico like, "Phew, dodged that bullet."


End file.
